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墨書 Inktalez
As the forensic team lifted the body onto a stretcher to transport it, Ni Zhe noticed several dark stains on the white pajamas on the back of the corpse. He touched them and found they were all dust.
At that moment, Detective Xiao Hu rushed in and, seeing Ni Zhe deep in thought, asked, "Team Leader Ni, what do you think? Is it a suicide?"
"It's still too early to say," Ni Zhe replied, scratching his beard.
"By the way, my colleagues from the forensic department found an unidentified substance at the bottom of the door. The results are in; it's oil stains," Xiao Hu reported, providing a lead.
"Oh?" Ni Zhe walked over to the door and crouched down to inspect the gap. The width of the gap was about 1.5 centimeters.
Why would there be oil stains on the bottom edge of the door and on the floor beneath it? Ni Zhe couldn't make sense of it.
"To determine whether it's a suicide or if someone staged it, there's a method we can try," Ni Zhe said, staring intently at the severed rope on the electric fan stand, speaking slowly.
Xiao Hu looked at him in confusion.
Ni Zhe fetched a measuring tape. He first went to measure the height of the chair that lay on its side beneath the fan, then stood on it to measure the length of the severed rope. Afterward, he handed the measuring tape to Xiao Hu and ordered, "Quickly go measure the length of the severed rope around the neck of the corpse and its height excluding the head. Come back and report to me immediately."
"Yes!" Xiao Hu dashed out of the room like an arrow. Five minutes later, he returned, panting heavily as he reported his measurements.
Ni Zhe snatched the measuring tape from Xiao Hu's hands and collaborated with him to measure the distance from the fan stand to the floor.
In the end, he concluded, "This is not a suicide."
Xiao Hu seemed to understand as his eyes widened. He stared at Ni Zhe and said, "I get what you mean now. The length of the severed rope under the fan stand plus the length of the severed rope around the neck plus the height of the corpse excluding its head plus the height of the chair—all these added together is less than the height of the fan from the ground. This means that it would be impossible for the deceased to have hanged themselves using this chair unless they could float."
"Exactly, you're making progress," Ni Zhe praised. Xiao Hu smiled shyly in response.
But Ni Zhe suddenly straightened his face. "So this is a meticulously planned murder, and a locked-room murder at that."
He was astonished by his new discovery and unconsciously moved to the window. This time, he noticed that a patch of snow on the outer windowsill had clearly been wiped away. Could it be that the murderer really entered and exited through the window? But how could one explain the lack of footprints in the snow? At that moment, a spark of inspiration flashed in Ni Zhe's mind—could the murderer be someone from the dormitory below?
This way, they wouldn't have to step on the snow; they could simply climb down from here to the window of their own dormitory directly below and then enter through the window. The dormitory building was three stories tall, so both second-floor and first-floor residents were suspects.
"Let's go check room 205," Ni Zhe said to Xiao Hu as he headed for the door. Xiao Hu had no choice but to follow him, feeling perplexed.
"It seems that Yuan Dapeng from 205 was a good friend of the deceased. I investigated earlier, and he's also one of the top students in the class," Xiao Hu reported his previous findings.
As they turned around the staircase, they found the door to room 205 wide open.
Ni Zhe politely knocked on the door.
A bearded, burly young man immediately came into view. He was using scissors to open a packet of meat sauce for instant noodles, preparing for lunch.
Seeing the arrival of two strangers, he cast a questioning glance at them.
"Hello, we are from the Public Security Bureau. Are you Yuan Dapeng?" Ni Zhe asked. The other party merely nodded slightly and asked cautiously, "I am. What do you need?"
Ni Zhe pulled up a chair and sat down while Xiao Hu stood by, ready to take notes. "We'd like to ask you about Zhu Kai's death," Ni Zhe said straightforwardly.
"Oh, what do you want to know?"
"Did Zhu Kai have any enemies? What was his personality like?"
"He was quite well-liked; there wasn't anyone in school who had a grudge against him. Both teachers and classmates liked him."
"Has he been feeling down about something lately? Is there a possibility he might commit suicide?"
"Speaking of suicide, he does seem to get a bit low sometimes, but I don't know what it's about. However, he's quite timid; even if he had thoughts of suicide, I doubt he'd actually go through with it," Yuan Dapeng said with a serious expression.
"Really? No wonder he cut the rope himself," Ni Zhe remarked, seemingly forgetting his earlier dismissal of the suicide theory, and nodded in agreement with Yuan Dapeng.
"The rope was cut?" Yuan Dapeng looked puzzled. "I knew he wouldn't dare to commit suicide; in the end, he still had to cut the rope. What a pity..."
After that, Ni Zhe and Yuan Dapeng chatted casually for a while. Ni Zhe got up and walked to the window, noticing that the iron bars on the window frame were securely in place without any damage. It was clear that no one could enter or exit through there.
"Why are there two missing bars on Zhu Kai's dormitory window?" he asked curiously.
"Oh, Zhu Kai is a bit strange; he has claustrophobia, and he sawed those two bars off himself. The school is even considering punishing him for it," Yuan Dapeng replied. "His dormitory is the only one in the whole building without window bars."
This statement overturned Ni Zhe's earlier hypothesis.
Since all the windows were fitted with sturdy iron bars, the idea that the murderer climbed from Zhu Kai's dormitory to his own room was clearly unfounded.
The mystery of the locked room reestablished itself before Ni Zhe once again.
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